DayZ Standalone released on Steam early access

DayZ 's standalone version, the follow-up to the popular Arma 2 mod, is out now on Steam early access for $30 . Unfortunately, DayZ creator Dean Hall was notified at the last minute that the launch trailer (below) that Steam pulled his trailer "due to censorship," but you can still watch it thanks to YouTube.

As we've previously reported , Hall has made it explicitly clear that this is an alpha build of the game in the truest sense of the term. It is a work in progress, only a representation of what's to come, and filthy with bugs only players who want to observe and participate in the development process should buy into.

True to his word, Hall gave this warning top billing over any other cool features in DayZ. The main description of the game on Steam reads:

"WARNING: THIS GAME IS EARLY ACCESS ALPHA. PLEASE DO NOT PURCHASE IT UNLESS YOU WANT TO ACTIVELY SUPPORT DEVELOPMENT OF THE GAME AND ARE PREPARED TO HANDLE WITH SERIOUS ISSUES AND POSSIBLE INTERRUPTIONS OF GAME FUNCTIONING."

And only then does he describe the experience, a realistic, open-world survival horror hybrid-MMO.

Disclaimers aside, the descriptions of what's included in the alpha currently available on Steam is sure to get a lot of people to buy into it. It already has Chernarus, the 230km² landmass of deep forests, cities, and villages that severs as DayZ's playground, and it can already handle up to 40 players per server. Persistent player profiles, crafting and other staples of the original DayZ mode are also all in there to varying degrees. We'll see you there, but we won't trust you to not steal our stuff.